Remarkable times we’re living in when a headline reads, “Cancer Study Leaves Every Patient Cancer Free”, but that exactly what has happened during a small trial that has left every single patient in remission. This has been praised as “unprecedented” and “remarkable”inside a paper that was published out of The New England Journal of Medicine on Sunday that outlines 18 different cancer patients who were treated using dostarlimab for 3 weeks every 6 months. All patients are now cancer-free, including a patient who started the trial two years ago. An author of the paper, Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr. says, “I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer”, according to a report from The New York Times.

Oncologist Dr. Andrea Cercek at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and co-author of the paper describes “a lot of happy tears” at the conclusion of the trial. Dr. Kimmie Ng, who is a cancer expert from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor from Harvard Univestiy also noted that the study will need replication, but is calling the results “unprecedented” and “remarkable”.

“We initiated prospective phase 2 study in which single-agent dostarlimab, an anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody, was administered every 3 weeks for 6 months in patients with mismatch repair -deficient stage II or III rectal adenocarcinoma,” according to the study. “This treatment was to be followed by standard [chemo-radiotherapy] and surgery.” The patient who received the drug, that “unmasks cancer cells, allowing the immune system to identify and destroy them,” did not have to go on with further cancer treatments according the the Times. All of the patients “had a clinical complete response, with no evidence of tumor on magnetic resonance imaging. At the time of this report, no patients had received [chemo-radiotherapy] or undergone surgery, and no cases of progression or recurrence had been reported during follow-up (range, 6 to 25 months). No adverse events of grade 3 or higher have been reported.”

According to Hanna K. Sanoff, MD, MPH of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center the finding were “very encouraging” and “these initial findings of the remarkable benefit with the use of dostarlimab are very encouraging but also need to be viewed with caution until the results can be replicated in a larger and more diverse population,” according to Science Daily. “The responses in these first 12 of a planned-for 30 patients in the trial were remarkable and exceed what we would expect with the standard chemotherapy plus radiation. Although quality of life measures have not been reported yet, it’s encouraging that some of the most difficult symptoms, such as pain and bleeding, all resolved with the use of dostarlimab.”

Source: The Daily Wire